[CentOS] Windows XP fixmbr from Centos?

Wed Jul 30 15:16:00 UTC 2008
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

Robert Moskowitz wrote:

>>  
>>> I am still dead on my corporate system, and the XP boot CD I brought 
>>> won't boot.  And so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF 
>>> meeting that happens to have one in their bag of tricks...
>>>     
>>
>> If this is an XP system and the MBR set by XP, then you can boot with 
>> the (any!) XP CD/DVD into the rescue console and use fixmbr command. 
> I know that, but so far I have not found anyone here at the IETF meeting 
> that has one.  I mean, who carries such a CD with them to a week-long 
> meeting?  I have a couple of options to pursue still.  LIke the network 
> helpdesk vendor who is local...
> 
>> However, you indicated earlier there is some encryption in place, I 
>> don't know if that is already in effect at MBR level. If it is, this 
>> method or the one mentioned in the article won't help.
>>   
> My corporate tech guy told me the first step is to get a standard XP mbr 
> back on the system, and then he believes he can talk me through getting 
> the encryption working again.

Did your centos install work?  Normally dual-boot systems bring up 
windows with grub in the mbr and a chainloader entry to load windows. 
Even if you are usb-booting centos, you should be able to set it up to 
chainload the boot to the windows partition on the hard disk as an 
alternate grub entry.  I'm not sure how this will mesh with disk 
encryption, though, but if a standard windows mbr would work, this might.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com